Sunday, November 6, 2011

All Saints

For All the Saints! An inspiring hymn.Today is indeed All Saints Day.I like to think of everyone as having at least a streak of saintliness in ‘em, despite whatever mischief they got into, often by their imagining in retrospect that they were merely “In the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson discovered that punishment and crime spring from the same roots. Poverty fits in there also. At least the poor are less likely to have the slickest attorneys. Then there’s the judge in, believe it or not, Texas, who won’t allow DNA testing on a death row prisoner.In my opinion killing people is murder, whether a person formally labeled criminal is doing or it, or a government.

It is easier for me to grieve the loss of my father when I shine the light on the times he was loving toward me and other people. Sub-carpeting (sweeping under the rug) my memories of his carrying me on his shoulders for the Gasparilla Parade when I was about 2 1/2, feeling the pain of guilt, easily done compared with the pain of loss (I was guilty because I hadn’t convinced him not to smoke) had isolated me from my heart. Maybe I wasn’t able to cry when he died because he had often threatened me when I was a kid by saying that if I didn’t stop crying he was going to give me something to cry about. I don’t think he made that saying up! At any rate, as of this date he is a Saint.

I hope I continue the dream I had a couple of nights ago of his running a long distance race with me.